A businessman and a rocket scientist want to crowdfund a mission to the Moon. All they need is a million dollars.
Can you crowdfund your way to the moon? Kristian von Bengtson and Chris Larmour, the co-founders of Moonspike, want to send a privately built rocket to the Moon and land an impactor in the surface. And they want to get the project off the ground by soliciting $1 million through a Kickstarter campaign that kicked off this morning.
The plan is audacious. Within a decade, von Bengston and a team will build a rocket and a small impactor, select a launch, and send it to the moon. The impactor itself will be a technological demonstration, but an orbiter will monitor the plumes created to send back some science as well.
If it succeeds, it will be the first private mission to the moon. It will also come from an upstart company that falls somewhere in between the high-profile private spaceflight community (like SpaceX or Orbital ATK) and amateur rocketry clubs awaiting an orbital launch. Von Bengston comes to the project from one such amateur start-up, Copenhagen Suborbitals, which is buys building a crewed amateur mission to space.
"What drives Chris and I in this project is this engineering adventure," von Bengston says. "Obviously there will be science attached to this, but it's part of the adventure."
Larmour manages the business side of things. His plan is to begin searching for further funding once the Kickstarter "Series A" is a success. If the project doesn't succeed? There's no launch. Larmour says he doesn't want to work with venture capital for the initial round of funding, as it might hamper the timeline.
Instead, the team says it will post its feasability studies immediately, outlining the launch vehicle and mission plans. From there, they will continuously post updates to their Kickstarter stakeholders as they fabricate engine parts and complete the design.
"If we manage to raise that Kickstarter amount, we plan on showing people on a weekly basis that hardware is not just being drafted, but also constructed," von Bengston says. "We have to demonstrate that we're using that money responsibly toward our project goals," Larmour adds.
Larmour says the pair have already spoken with space agencies, public and private, about the plan, seeking input along the way and hoping to garner goodwill. Larmour, as the manager of the business side of things, is also working with regulators to ensure that the eventual launch is up to protocol.
So when will that launch be? Von Bengston isn't setting a date yet, saying that with almost all the parts developed in-house, it's a matter of getting it right rather than meeting a deadline. "If I say five, six, seven years, it won't be correct, but I do believe it will be a fast process," he says. The team also won't take on borrowed or bought rocket parts to get the job done.
"For us, the task is not to get someone else to build the rockets," von Bengston says. "It's about taking that task ourselves—otherwise there's no fun in it."
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